Transcript
Speaker: The content you're about to hear may be graphic in nature. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker: This is True Crime XS.
Speaker: In the first episode of what we're talking about, we were talking about Calvin Duncan, and i wanted to bring up to you a portion of the New York Times article like related to this, because this has been a hot topic this year.
Speaker: And so I'm not going to do the whole thing, but if people want to read about this, the title in the New York Times was, he was exonerated in a murder and elected to office he may never serve.
Speaker: um It says Calvin Duncan, who became a lawyer and advocate for incarcerated people, was recently elected criminal court clerk in New Orleans. Lawmakers are racing to eliminate the role.
Speaker: This is from April of 2026. So this is all happening this year. They have a picture of Calvin Duncan on this article. And the the headline for that is Calvin Duncan, who was recently elected criminal court clerk in New Orleans, forced the incumbent into a runoff. He won with 68 percent of the vote.
Speaker: And then it just has a little like an intro to this. It says Calvin Duncan started learning the law as a matter of necessity. he was serving a life sentence for murder and wanted to prove his innocence. He not only regained his freedom, but helped many other incarcerated people do the same.
Speaker: He graduated from law school at age 60, and last November, he was elected to the job of criminal court clerk in New Orleans, ousting an incumbent after drawing an unusual level of attention to a race that rarely attracts any.
Speaker: But Mr. Duncan may never get to serve. State lawmakers in Louisiana are racing to abolish the office altogether before he assumes it on May the fourth of 2026. Republican officials in Louisiana want to eliminate the criminal court clerk job as part of a more sweeping effort to reshape the judicial system in New Orleans, which detractors have long derided as costly and inefficient.
Speaker: The plan, they say, would save money by cutting judges and consolidating court functions. But while Republicans have talked in the past about combining the city's criminal and civil courts, it became a priority only after Duncan was elected.
Speaker: Under the proposal, the criminal court clerk's responsibilities, including maintaining an ever-expanding trove of case records and evidence, as well as running elections, would be reassigned to the city's elected civil clerk.
Speaker: So that's what's making this whole thing happen with the Louisiana Attorney General. And they seem to be making this into like a kind of a political thing here, which to some degree it is,
Speaker: and I don't want to cut you off if you have some thoughts on this. I was just going to say, I didn't realize it was an elected position, ah but it appears that it is an elected position that legislators have essentially gone through the process of doing away with, right?
Speaker: ah Whoever's taking it personally may be rightly doing so. It may have nothing to do with the person who got the office, right? But our legislators, I don't live in Louisiana, but in general, state legislators have the power to do these types of things.
Speaker: ah They got enough people to agree to do it, right? Right. They've gotten rid of the position. And we kind of throw it around a lot, but like I'm sure everyone's heard people say you know people need to stay in their lane.
Speaker: Yes. Well, it's literally the legislators lane to, you know, have these positions come to decisions to eliminate these positions, etc. And so that wouldn't be the job of the district attorney. It wouldn't be the job of the mayor.
Speaker: It's not the job of the attorney general. I'm not entirely sure she was making it her job, except basically to tell the others, you know, not to be pushing back. I don't even know what has happened here, okay? The legislators have the power to do what they did.
Speaker: Everybody has the freedom to say whatever they want about it, okay? Without fear of repercussions. So whether that is coming from The criminal charges towards the attorney general or the attorney general threatening to take the office away from others. None of that is real. Like none of that is something that happens as a result of something the legislators have, you know, gone through the process of doing legitimately. Right.
Speaker: So this is all stupid. It is stupid. So what's, what's, what this is going to sound even dumber, but I don't live in Louisiana. I've done a lot of work on cases in Louisiana over the years.
Speaker: I have opinions about the Louisiana justice system. um I think it's widely racist. I think the population is skewed, so it's hard to see if it's racist or not. I think,
Speaker: Overall, it would be like a great place to start an overhaul. Like, so overall, an overhaul in Louisiana would be a good thing. I do, I think so much has gotten through the Louisiana courts so many times. Like they're one of the only places that have these cases that go like with multiple um prosecutions and convictions and end up in the Supreme Court.
Speaker: You and I have talked, not really on the podcast as much, but about the case of Curtis Kiles. I worked on one of the later versions of Curtis Kiles' case. It went on from 1988 until about 2011. I think
Speaker: I think that overall in Louisiana, the criminal justice system is just a disaster. i think it's a really good example of something that you said about staying in their lane. think so many people have tinkered with that on both sides of political aisles. If you were to choose to mainstream parties and like put them at fault, I think they're all in the wrong.
Speaker: um I think in general, Louisiana is the second most likely place that you could be convicted of a crime you didn't commit and be sentenced to death.
Speaker: It used to be the third, but I think it has become the second. And that's behind Texas and Florida. I was going to say, I definitely would have to really think about any case with a death sentence in Louisiana.
Speaker: Right. And that so we were talking about Calvin Duncan. Yeah. and And I sort of gave the shorthand version of his story related to these other this other Louisiana thing we were talking about.
Speaker: um What you and I have discovered is that sometimes we cram a lot into shorter episodes, and it's easier for us to sprawl out into additional episodes. To be fair, if it's not like you went too far off topic. it's Part of the reason we find this stuff interesting and relevant requires the explanation. so Right.
Speaker: yeah and And for the two of us to sit down, we start looking at these cases. And sometimes we have questions about the process. Sometimes we have questions about the people. ah Sometimes we have questions about the crime. And I brought up the other like Louisiana story that we started down because they were going after their attorney general with a local parish's grand jury. And that's going to be fascinating. It's it's literally just unfolding.
Speaker: I feel like all voters should take note of this type of nonsense unless something is brought to my attention because I'm the one giving the opinion here. This is nothing but nonsense. And I feel like voters should take note of it and realize that, know,
Speaker: You don't want a district attorney, an elected district attorney, who has the audacity to think doing this is okay, because it's not.
Speaker: yeah And their position should be exalted to a position beyond themselves where, like, they wouldn't even dream of doing something this ridiculous with the power that they've been given, right? Yeah. That they would say this is ridiculous because it's, it's, it is ridiculous. And I feel like the nerve involved here, it's, it's the wrong combination of dynamics, right? um Anytime. And I'm not saying that like if an attorney general, like was really committing crimes, like,
Speaker: tangible society hurting crimes that action shouldn't be taken that should absolutely happen but again i said previously that just because you can indict a ham sandwich doesn't mean that you do it right in fact you show your worth in the position by never doing that Yeah. and i'm So I'm torn on this one from a different perspective. I don't necessarily think she did the right or wrong thing from what we can see. Like, I don't have that opinion yet.
Speaker: The opinion I do have currently is that New Orleans is so stuck with junk and Louisiana as a state, even like if we go beyond Orleans Parish, like it is so screwed up from the criminal justice system perspective. I definitely think.
Speaker: I think things like having that clerk role are important, but like I don't think that's like the most important part of it all. um i think eliminating a position like that's not going to help the backlog and the problems that they're having. So I'm sort of in opposition to what you're saying in, except for the grand jury part. I agree with you there. I think like eliminating that position is a mistake. I just don't think threatening people is the right way to go.
Speaker: And if she didn't, Like if they didn't actually lose their jobs, like she didn't do anything tangible. So that's where I come back to your position. I'm like, you know what? If she didn't do anything that's an actual threat or eliminate an actual position, then all of this is like an exercise in him sandwiching.
Speaker: Well, right, but also, like, the legislators were the ones that got rid of the position, not her. Right, right, and it's that takes me back to what you first said, and that is that the voters need to pay attention to what's happening.
Speaker: Correct, because, like, either you voted or by omission... people that made this decision were elected, right? Right. They have the power to do these kinds of things. And if you don't like it, your most direct route would be to vote for someone else.
Speaker: Yeah. The story, this was originally like the story from the last episode, but like, it was so interesting to get to talk to you about like the the other part of this, that I made it this episode's focus. Yeah.
Speaker: um I actually, yeah i found the timing of this fascinating because I first read about this back in March of 2023. um and it is ah it's another person named Duncan. It's not Calvin Duncan. It's not related to Calvin Duncan.
Speaker: But the way that I came across this and I started looking at it and digging into it, because i'm I'm using a lot of sources, like mainstream and slightly off mainstream for this story. But the first place was the NewRepublic.com TNR.
Speaker: They had an article called Deadly Politics back in March 2023 from a woman named Laura Bazelon. The title caught my attention.
Speaker: And i I know you talk about headline skimming. If I had headline skimmed this, I would not understand it. But the the title of the article is, What If the Worst Crime Imaginable Never Happened?
Speaker: And the subtitle or like the kind of the header under the headline is Jimmy Duncan is on death row in Louisiana based on fraudulent science. But that might not matter if the state's governorship flips this fall.
Speaker: There are some politics involved in the the storytelling. I'm just going to go ahead and say, i don't I'm not taking sides in all of this. I just have to mention that because that's the sections that these, um the deadly politics part of all of this, that's where it's unfolding. It's not unfolding in true crime news. Does that make sense?
Speaker: Correct. Yeah. So I'm going to tell you this this story. And this I got from New Republic. So it says on December 18th 1993, Haley Elise Olivo was found face down in the bathtub of an apartment in West Monroe, Louisiana, while in the care of her mother's boyfriend.
Speaker: Jimmy Duncan said he left the 23-month-old alone for just a few minutes to do the dishes before he found her unconscious when he returned to the bathroom.
Speaker: He tried to perform CPR, then carried Haley in his arms to a neighbor's house. After life-saving measures by a responding officer and the paramedics failed, Haley was pronounced dead at the local hospital.
Speaker: Several hours later, under police interrogation, Duncan was inconsolable. Sobbing, he told the police, I jerked her out of the bathtub and tried to get her to breathe, and I couldn't.
Speaker: I tried to blow her air. I tried pushing on her little tummy. And when officers concluded the interview with Duncan and asked if he wanted to add anything to his statement, he cried out, I just want to bring the baby back.
Speaker: The West Monroe Police Department charged Duncan with negligent homicide, alleging that his careless and inatten carelessness and inattention led to the toddler's death.
Speaker: After doctors performed this autopsy and they examined Haley's rectum, they suspected possible abuse. They then sent her body to Jackson, Mississippi to have a pathologist named Dr. Stephen Hain and his colleague, Dr. Michael West, i take a look at this baby.
Speaker: Their findings changed everything. So Michael West identified tooth marks on Haley's body. and Stephen Hain identified what he stated was overwhelming evidence that she was the victim of a violent sexual assault.
Speaker: Based on determinations here, prosecutors concluded that Jimmy Duncan had bitten Haley repeatedly, anally raped her, and forcibly drowned her to cover up his crime.
Speaker: So prosecutors upgraded the negligent homicide charge to first-degree murder. He maintains his innocence from the beginning, but in 1998, a jury convicted him of capital murder and sentenced him to death.
Speaker: So he is sent to death row at the same place that we were talking about with Calvin Duncan. That is Louisiana State Penitentiary, or Ann Goldblatt. He's remained there ever since. At the time of this article, this was March 2023.
Speaker: um He spent a quarter century waiting his execution, but that could change. Duncan's lawyers filed a petition late last year that seeks to overturn his conviction and set him free.
Speaker: Should those efforts fail, Duncan's prospects are grim. The odds that the state could have a new Republican governor this time next year, one determined to restart executions in Louisiana for the first time in over a dozen years.
Speaker: So that's where they get into the Innocence Project taking on this case. um We have multiple articles that you and I have gone through on this. I'm going to stick to this one for just a little bit longer because it talks about some of the science involved.
Speaker: It says, what if the worst crime imaginable never happened? That's the argument Duncan's legal team and their experts are making. In late December, Duncan's attorneys joined by the Innocence Project filed to overturn his conviction under a state law enacted in late 2021 that allows prisoners to bring claims based on newly discovered evidence of innocence.
Speaker: Duncan's team argued that the case against him was the product of fraudulent science, prosecutorial chicanery, and the lies of a jailhouse informant. So...
Speaker: The centerpiece of this petition is a video recording made shortly after Haley's death. This is during the autopsy. And in this, the dentist, Michael West, can be seen repeatedly embedding a mold of Duncan's teeth into Haley's body and dragging it across her face, effectively creating bite works.
Speaker: So this one the first times I've ever heard it described this way, and that is disturbing. so Doesn't it make you wonder how he was allowed in there to do that? Like, that's weird.
Speaker: Well, yeah yeah, it makes me wonder a lot of things. And that is not the least of which. Like, ah the first thing I was wondering is, how is this guy an expert? So the jury never sees this video.
Speaker: Prosecutors moved to exclude it. You know why they moved to exclude it? Because he was making the bite marks. Yeah. Because he had been he had been suspended. so the the American Board of Forensic Odontology suspended him, like, basically from his conduct.
Speaker: And that was overstating the certainty of the statistical conclusions in his bite mark cases. According to journalist Radley Balco, who uncovered this autopsy video and has this extensively tracked this ah Michael West, including...
Speaker: his record of providing what is described as suspect testimony. He writes in and in an article in 2007 in The Reason. So that's even before any of this is going on, but after the damage would have already been done. He says, West has taken forensic odontology to bizarre megalomaniacal depths.
Speaker: Despite West questionable methods, the trial judge in Duncan's case determined that the video contained no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant, except, you know, the part where he's like creating the bike marks.
Speaker: I think that would be like, wouldn't you find that exculpatory? I absolutely do.
Speaker: The prosecutors don't end up bringing Michael West in at trial. Instead, they have a different dentist who never examined Haley, never saw the video, watched the video, probably didn't know the video existed.
Speaker: They testified to the findings. So Michael West denies any wrongdoing. He claims that police and doctors at the hospital also saw these bite marks. When he is asked about it from the author here, Wes says they called them injuries, honey, until you match them up with someone's dentition. They're just injuries.
Speaker: He said he did not testify at trial because he would have broken down and and cried. Haley, he said, could have been my daughter's twin. His suspension was, in his words, uncalled for because the results he showed in his study have since been replicated by other people. It's been 10 to 12 years and I'm still waiting for my letter of apology.
Speaker: I don't think that's coming, dude. No, it's not coming. So Jimmy Duncan, his petition also details how the rest of the state's cases come undone since then.
Speaker: In October, a recantation came from a jailhouse informant who had testified at trial that while the two were housed in a cell together, Duncan had confessed to them, confessed to this jailhouse informant and said it must have been the devil that had spurred him on to sexually assault Haley.
Speaker: The informant's testimony was given in exchange for favorable treatment by prosecutors. That's a deal that was never disclosed to Duncan's trial counsel. So that makes it a Brady violation.
Speaker: ah The violent anal rape testified to by Hain and a second expert. According to this petition, it's not supported by the physical evidence. The brutal sexual assault of a baby would necessarily involve a great deal of blood and other signs of acute physical injury, none of which are present in this case.
Speaker: And that's mostly true. I have seen... um I've seen a lot of cases involving parts of the body that we expect to be damaged. And I'll just say that like the body, the human body is amazing. It heals very quickly.
Speaker: The most reasonable explanation for redness and fissures to the child's anus, according to Duncan's expert at the time, is what naturally occurs to a ah body post-mortem and some combination of ah diaper rash and like what would be described as overly vigorous butt wiping, trying to keep the baby clean.
Speaker: Over the course of her short life, Haley suffered from a series of head injuries and seizures. Her medical history was kept from the jury. Twice she was taken to the emergency room while in the care of her mother after suffering a seizure, both times after hitting her head.
Speaker: Three weeks before she died, she sustained another head wound while in Duncan's care after she stepped on an open drawer and a small dresser fell over on top of her.
Speaker: ah This like was to the point that Child Protective Services had gotten involved and done an investigation. They found no evidence of physical abuse. Following a hospitalization after that incident, Haley was discharged to her mother and grandmother, who were told not to leave her alone in the bathtub because of the risk of the seizures occurring.
Speaker: um According to Duncan's lawyers, Haley simply had a seizure and drowned. There's no biting, there's no rape, there's no murder. So... What's interesting about this is in 2023, the New Republic paints this out pretty well. They say this is not the story of an outlier case of a wrongfully convicted prisoner with a compelling innocence claim.
Speaker: For over two decades, Weston Hain... built a lucrative business diagnosing bite-mark deaths in cases like Jimmy Duncan's. A 2016 Washington Post piece by Radley Balco, it described West as a rock star in the world of forensics in the mid to late 90s.
Speaker: From the early nineteen ninety s until 2008, Hain performed at least 80% of the autopsies in the state of Mississippi and would often bring Michael Weston to consult.
Speaker: They also routinely took cases from Louisiana. ah Hain performed up to 1,700 autopsies per year. The National Standard at the time said the appropriate number would be no more than 250.
Speaker: Despite the fact that he flunked the forensic certification examination administered by the American Board of Pathology. Usually you find in these aggressive, violent sexual acts, that's where you find a lot of bite marks. Don't really know if I'm qualified to get into all the sociology or psychology of it, but they turn animalistic.
Speaker: This is according to West in an interview of the 2020 Netflix series, The Innocence Files. And that... ah documentary episode, they're recounting the case of LaVon Brooks, a Mississippi man who had been convicted for the rape and murder of a three-year-old girl after Weston Hain claimed they maxed his teeth to bite marks they said they found on the victim.
Speaker: In 1992, Brooks was sentenced to life without parole. He served 16 years before DNA exonerated him. In the mid-90s, Kennedy Brewer was convicted of capital murder and sent to Mississippi's death row for killing his girlfriend's three-year-old daughter under the same theory, also based on testimony from Weston Hain.
Speaker: We didn't even think they were bite marks, said a leading expert of the unanimous conclusion that he and his colleagues reached after reviewing Brewer's case. I remember this happening. i would have been very young. you remember the real-time version of it?
Speaker: Well, here's what I remember. I remember real-time evidence being recapped as like bite mark evidence being what ultimately got someone convicted, right? Right, right.
Speaker: I remember this happening. I was young, and as a young person who didn't give a happy about any of it, I remember thinking, well, that isn't going to end up being credible.
Speaker: Right? Right. Not that I thought about this stuff very much, but I remember just thinking to myself, people are really stupid if they think that bite mark evidence is a thing. Now, why did I think that? I don't know. i don't know why. I've i've always thought bite mark evidence is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. And I think it comes back to if it were really a thing, right?
Speaker: The prisoner would just pull out all their teeth. Then they wouldn't be connected to anything, right? Just coming along, huh? Well, because there would be nothing to check it against, right?
Speaker: right it's just It just never seemed like a real thing to me because teeth are so, like, you can lose a tooth, you can break a tooth. like And a lot of people's teeth, I imagine, would be the same.
Speaker: Right. Well, so we end up with Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer. What's crazy about their case, so Brewer ends up being exonerated in 2008 after serving 15 years in prison.
Speaker: What's crazy about their cases is that Justin Johnson was the man who killed both of those children. He confessed to raping and murdering the children, and he said he never bit them. Oh, that's so bad.
Speaker: Yeah, it's awful. But Leroy Riddick is an Alabama medical examiner. They talked to him in this DNR article. He says every prosecutor in Mississippi knows that if you don't like the results you got from an autopsy, you take the body over to Dr. Hayne.
Speaker: So Hayne and Wes, their shoddy work and questionable testimony have been linked to at least seven wrongful convictions. And it's got to be so many more. oh it's definitely going to be more.
Speaker: um Collectively, these exonerees have all served more than 400 years in prison. just that Just this group in 2023 that they're talking about. The bite mark science, as Meg just said, ah that was their calling card. It has been completely debunked at this point.
Speaker: Nationwide, more than two dozen other prisoners who are convicted using similar techniques have been freed. So, ah One of the Innocence Project attorneys, Chris Fabrican, he is a member of Chris Duncan, of of Jimmy Chris Duncan's legal team. He's the author of the book, Junk Science in the American Criminal Justice System. He says the case against Jimmy Duncan is a complete fabrication by junk scientists at the height of their most virulent work in the South.
Speaker: The prosecution is not required to file a response to this petition, Duncan's lawyers say they will ask the court to order one if necessary. ah the judicial The fourth judicial district is over all of this. um They declined to comment. They cited it as pending litigation.
Speaker: Now, Dr. Hain passed away in 2020, but Dr. West stated he stands by their work and their medical conclusions because he's delusional. And then he says defense attorneys are allowed to lie, cheat, and steal to do anything they can to get the death sentence overturned.
Speaker: That's not true, but you're not allowed to lie, cheat, and steal to get someone convicted and sentenced to death. I feel like it is entirely possible ah that he is really delusional and he believes what he's saying.
Speaker: Right. so And that's that's sort of where they go here. They point out that Jeff Landry is the attorney general at the time. They point out that he's running for governor. and then this article kind of gets a little too political for me.
Speaker: And they basically say they don't think that Jimmy Duncan will be okay. If Landry gets elected, part of that is hinging on the petition, not necessarily working.
Speaker: um so they don't think they have the clemency option. Do you know what i mean? oh Yeah. Okay. I see what you're saying. Um, yeah. Uh, It, yeah, go ahead. Sorry. Okay. So that is all taking place three years ago, basically, and a little change, but I have been following this case. Like I have, I have a lot going on here with this case and we have to, we have to move forward in time a little bit at a time to understand what's happening.
Speaker: So, The next thing that happens is this petition is largely successful. um I pulled a April 2025 article from a place called Boltzmag.
Speaker: um This was written by Piper French. It says he's been on Louisiana's death row for decades. A judge has vacated his conviction. And you have to pay attention here because this is where they stop calling him Jimmy and start calling him Chris.
Speaker: The subtitle says Chris Duncan's longtime claims of innocence were boosted by the discrediting of bite mark analysis and by recent reforms now under threat from the state's Republican leadership.
Speaker: Again, I'm not taking a stand on any of the politics. I'm just noting it because it keeps coming up in all these articles about this case.
Speaker: um So, and this is a two-part thing here, but it basically says Jimmy Christian Duncan has spent over 26 years on death row. And then they retell us the story I just told you on Thursday,
Speaker: So that's in April 2025. A Louisiana judge dismissed his conviction. So basically he vindicates Duncan's efforts to prove his innocence. And by the way, nobody's saying he didn't cause the death of this child. I just want to point that out as we go.
Speaker: the versions are so wildly different. Like he says, i left the baby. Do you remember the whole thing about like toddlers can drown in an inch of water or two inches of water? Yeah, of course I do. And this toddler had seizures. Right. So, so like he potentially like caused the death of this child and he acknowledges that he has just been stating all this stuff about this violent sexual assault and abuse of this child. I did not do.
Speaker: Well, and there happens to be a situation where because this child had had issues with seizures, and then I think it was the fall ah from climbing on the dresser set that got CPS involved, they actually had, like, they investigated this child shortly before the child died. And there was no signs of any of this trauma.
Speaker: Correct. but This is a two-year-old baby, basically. It's a little child. It would have been obvious if they were being repeatedly abused. Or at all abused.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. So here's what it says in here. It says, um District Court Judge Alvin Sharp wrote that Duncan had successfully demonstrated his claim of factual innocence based on new evidence not available at the original trial. So they're sticking to this 2021 statute that allows them to present like evidence that wasn't available. Yeah.
Speaker: His conviction relied on a so-called bite mark analysis, which is a method that's since been discredited and is widely regarded as junk science that was conducted by now infamous duo, Dr. Stephen Hain and dentist Michael West.
Speaker: Hain and West have since been found responsible for a number of other wrongful convictions. Duncan is the last man left on death row who has been convicted on the basis of their work. Duncan's case fits with a long tradition of wrongful convictions in Louisiana. Between 1976 and 2015, an astonishing 80% of the state's capital sentences were later reversed. Nine people have been exonerated off death row in the time that Duncan has been there.
Speaker: He is also the first person to receive relief under louis Louisiana's factual innocence statute. This is a reform that was created in 2021 under Governor John Bill Edwards, who is a Democrat, which dramatically expanded how prisoners can make innocence claims by allowing people to introduce new facts rather than simply raising constitutional violations as part of their post-conviction review process. And that's something that you and i have talked about in different jurisdictions over the years. It can be very difficult to get an actually innocent person even attention, let alone to have them go all the way through the process successfully have them found factually innocent.
Speaker: It is like exceedingly difficult innocent person. Like, it it's so unbelievable to me sometimes. ah i In this case in particular, if you think about it, it has it like a It's a ah not...
Speaker: Like, we see it, but it's kind of even weirder when we see it this way. In the event that he hadn't brutally murdered this child, there was nobody else that had brutally murdered this child, right?
Speaker: Right. It wasn't like they were trying to establish who it was. Like, they actually made this crime happen, right, as opposed to an accident. Right. Yeah, this is an accidental death that ah has been twisted into something horrifying.
Speaker: Like really horrifying. And i for one, find it just all kinds of bad adjectives that...
Speaker: There could be a situation where a child drowned in the bathtub and a pathologist and er duta a forensic odontologist could make it be a situation where she was violently raped and bitten and murdered.
Speaker: Right. Like, how does that happen? Right. there Those bodies should look drastically different, right? Right. And for whatever reason, they were able to sell the snake oil for a while. Right.
Speaker: they They have been. And i just, like again, not getting into the political nature of all of this, but at the time he talks to ah to Chris Duncan and Chris Duncan is excited, but also scared that his ruling has gone in his favor.
Speaker: um And Jeff Landry would have been the governor by this point, because we've moved forward a couple of years from where he was the attorney general. ah He states that the 2021 election,
Speaker: ah Factual innocence statute is a woke, quote unquote, hug a thug policy. And that can't be ignored because you have someone who is running the highest legal office in the state of like, as far as prosecutions go, Louisiana, who is also now the governor which is apparently his award for just being an attorney general. um I find a lot of what he did as attorney general to be pretty obnoxious.
Speaker: ah But calling this the hug-a-thug policy is a sign of a prosecutor who never should have been a prosecutor. They were really meant to be like an Emco salesperson.
Speaker: Like they would be great at that. They have drive there. They're driven to do something that has no, you know, fundamental legal basis to it whatsoever. And that's one of the problems with this guy becoming a governor. he has also tried to gut this post-conviction relief on multiple occasions.
Speaker: Well, and I disagree with that stance entirely. Now, I was not prepared for you to say that. um That's his quote for this article. That's what he sent him. No, I gotcha. I'm not saying that you're incorrect. I'm just saying that it is unquestionable to even those of us who are nowhere near being any sort of prosecutor or attorney general that the...
Speaker: The idea behind the push in just about every state to have articles of evidence re-examined for possibly exonerating DNA evidence.
Speaker: is like just about as much not a hug a thug policy as it could possibly be. And that was a weird way for him to say anything about it at all, right? Totally inappropriate.
Speaker: But it's a real thing, right? That has gotten real results. And I do feel like In the event that it's being used to hug a thug, I could see where that would be a problem. That doesn't seem to be the case, though, right? I i think that comes from this like old, white, southern and northern man idea where these people who ran the country for a really long time actually don't have any...
Speaker: like basis for understanding their constituents whatsoever. We have this problem today. And the problem is the people underneath them are running all the smoothing out and spend doctoring to keep their campaigns afloat. But there's this old boys club that exists and has existed for hundreds of years that like they, it's not that they're like,
Speaker: Like, they're the people that have black friends. They don't even know how racist they are. By the way, Chris Duncan is white. I'm just throwing that in here. but And he's the furthest thing from a thug possible. He's an idiot. Don't get me wrong. And, like, this baby definitely died because of him, and he knows it. But, like, what was done to him is insane.
Speaker: So... Well, and what was done to the victim is insane as well. Correct. Because she was, she was like... She died by accident. And yes, she was at the age where the adult that was supervising her is responsible for that accident. But nonetheless, she was not this victim of a atrocious rape. And it's degrading even to suggest that. Right. Right.
Speaker: So Verita News and ProPublica jump on this. Not always the best sources, but like in this instance, no one else is really covering some of what's happening here. So at the same time, that article that I just read from was happening. Okay.
Speaker: So Bolts Magazine is talking about this in April, 2025. Right. Right. right You have to, you have to like, you have to wonder what is the attorney general and the prosecutors? Like, what are they planning? Right.
Speaker: And a year later, we find out Richard Webster writes an article that says prosecutors asked state Supreme Court to reinstate death penalty for Jimmy Duncan. So everything that we've just been talking about, ah the Paris prosecutors who were supported by the state's attorney general, who is the person we were talking about getting indicted.
Speaker: Just throwing that out there. They argue April 28th, 2026, before a skeptical Louisiana Supreme Court, that the Supreme Court should reinstate the murder conviction and the death sentence against Jimmy Chris Duncan, who was found guilty in the 1998 killing of his former girlfriend's 23-month-old daughter, Haley Olivelle.
Speaker: So Duncan's conviction was overturned April of last year by ah Wachita Parrish Judge Alvin Sharp. who determined it was based in part on bite mark evidence now considered by experts to be junk science. But not only that, he also specifically calls out Michael West.
Speaker: On Tuesday, the state's chief justice said his case ah would be a major test of a 2021 Louisiana law passed to provide a clearer path for post-conviction relief in the face of new evidence demonstrating innocence.
Speaker: The April ruling by Sharp to set aside Duncan's conviction and death sentence came after an investigation by various news outlets examining the reliability of the key forensic evidence that had been used to convict him.
Speaker: At the time, Duncan faced the possibility of being put to death as Governor Jeff Landry made moves to expedite executions after a 15-year pause. Seven months after Sharpe's ruling, so in December, Chris Duncan was released from prison after posting $150,000
Speaker: He was brought in and seated before the justices during Tuesday's oral arguments. Steve Chu, a district attorney for Wachita and Morehouse Parishes, told the seven justices that even if the bite mark evidence was discarded, injuries to the child clearly showed she'd been raped and murdered.
Speaker: And since Duncan was the only person with Haley at the time of death, his guilt could not be debated. We don't need the bite mark evidence to put Mr. Duncan in the apartment alone with his child, too, said. But Matilda Carbia, representing Duncan, pushed back, telling the justices that the state's allegations of sexual assault were based on a medical diagnosis that, like bite mark evidence, has been discredited.
Speaker: Carbia added that Haley likely died by accidental drowning due to a seizure caused by a previous head injury. There was no blood or semen found on the scene or on Duncan.
Speaker: And Carbia said, Jimmy Christian Duncan is an innocent man and Haley Olivo was not murdered. Justice Cade Cole appeared more sympathetic for Duncan's position, expressing skepticism as to whether he was guilty of murder.
Speaker: Perhaps he was negligent, Cole said of Duncan, who said he left the toddler alone in the bath on the night of her death. But the penalty for negligent homicide was 10 years. What's the proof that he killed her?
Speaker: Several of the justices focused on the tarnished reputations of the forensic experts whose work helped to convict Duncan, pathologist Dr. Stephen Hain, and forensic dentist Michael West.
Speaker: The longtime business partners examined Haley's body and determined that Duncan had assaulted and murdered her. That conclusion was based in part on bite marks found on her body, which West claimed were a match to Duncan's teeth.
Speaker: Following Duncan's trial, however, that methodology has come under intense scrutiny. Over the past 28 years, nine prisoners have now been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidentiary findings from both West and Hain.
Speaker: Three of those men were on death row. Duncan was the last person awaiting an execution based on the pair's work. With all that before us, can we reasonably impose a death penalty in this case, said Chief Justice John Weimer.
Speaker: he's He directs this question to Duncan's lawyer, Carbia, and she says, no, Your Honor. If the justices refuse to reinstate Duncan's conviction, prosecutors can appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, retry Duncan on the first-degree murder charge or lesser offenses, choose set in court that his office intends to retry the case if it comes to that but didn't say what charges they would pursue, If, on the other hand, the court reinstates the murder, conviction, and death sentence, then Duncan could also appeal to the U.S. s Supreme Court. Which, by the way, if you don't know this by now, listening to me and Meg talk, Louisiana wastes a lot of the U.S. Supreme Court's time.
Speaker: They could solve this on their own at home. They absolutely could. And for the life of me, it escapes me why why there's still these issues, right? Right.
Speaker: There's a lot that they continue to talk about here. You're free to go and do your own homework on this case. But there's one thing I wanted to bring up here. Haley's mother, so Allison Leighton-Staphen, and the family of her father, Lloyd Donald Olivelle, he, by the way, he died in 1996, they have excoriated the stakes tactics. In February 2026, the family of Haley's father filed a brief for the court voicing their belief in Duncan's innocence.
Speaker: While expressing frustration that the DA's office shut them out of the process, despite the state constitution granting victims the right to be present and heard during all critical stages of pre-conviction and post-conviction proceedings, family members had said they repeatedly reached out to two, asking for a meeting on their thoughts and concerns, but never received a response.
Speaker: Instead, the brief said the DA misrepresented their position, telling the court that Duncan should not have been released on bail because he presented a safety risk to the victim's family. Not only are they not in fear of Duncan, but they said they're willing to help him raise bail and they support him upon his release.
Speaker: The family also reached out to Attorney General Liz Merle, who filed a brief opposing the overturning of Duncan's death sentence, but again, they were ignored. Just saying.
Speaker: Maybe she should have rethought that one a little bit. which um She did file a brief opposing overturning the death sentence. Yeah, she thinks that he should be, the she thought the conviction should be supported and the she wanted to move forward with the death sentence.
Speaker: Yeah, okay. Okay. He follows this up later. It's another article in ProPublica. just says Louisiana Supreme Court frees death row prisoner, calling the evidence against him scientifically indefensible. And that ruling came down in June of 2026. I don't know what they're going to do next. Retrying this case would be a giant waste of money.
Speaker: I think that the prosecution's office here, I think he's kind of doing his job to a degree. But like if you're lying along the way and not including the family of the victim and all that stuff, those sound like if the attorney general is having you do those things, they might be um indictable offenses in Louisiana.
Speaker: Violating victims' rights that are statutes. I'm just saying. ah Well, I mean, that is wrong. I feel like maybe ah this case has gone on for decades, and perhaps they're not fully aware that like they're the grandparents of the victim.
Speaker: I don't know. Something broke there, though, right? yeah Yeah, there's something seriously broke. Because they absolutely would have victims' rights as victims. they're as her as the victim's grandparents, they are the victims. You know, something that can't ever be reconciled for me would be the fact that you've got a man who, you know, in the event he brutally raped and murdered the 24-month-old baby, he's the one who's
Speaker: Babysitting her, right? Right, right. He's the one who seeks assistance when he realizes he left her unsupervised and she has now drowned in the bathtub.
Speaker: Yes. He's the one who cries to the police about what has happened. And he's the one who has lived with the guilt of this, right? 100%. Yeah. Now, having looked into all the cases that you've looked into, right?
Speaker: That I've looked into as well, because we usually look into the same cases. Is that what a super sadistic child rapist murderer is going to do no okay and so in the event her body had actually looked like it had been brutally raped and murdered they probably should go looking for the suspect as opposed to the person who was like watching her in the house right correct
Speaker: it makes The case doesn't make any sense from the beginning to the end. I realize that the Attorney General more than likely was... like She seems to really get along with the governor, right?
Speaker: Yeah, they seem to in lockstep. They support each other's positions. I am not necessarily opposed to the abstract idea that when...
Speaker: things are in place that they should occur for example like you know there's been this moratorium on the death penalty and i think the overall position is like these people have been sentenced to death kill them right right that's what i'm hearing which i'm not necessarily i am a don't get me wrong A lot of really careful consideration needs to come in a lot of death penalty circumstances because there's some crazy stuff that happened, like unbelievably crazy stuff. It's enough stuff that I don't trust death sentences, right? And this is a great example because this is completely a made-up crime.
Speaker: It's completely made up. In the event that he did not murder this child, this child was not murdered, right? Correct. Yeah, we don't – this is not an alternative. like Like in Calvin Duncan's case, there was another suspect.
Speaker: In this case, in Chris Duncan's case, there's not another suspect because it's either an accident and like he committed a crime from the perspective of negligence.
Speaker: Like, like if it's not really a murder though. Well, I mean, reckless death. There's like a lot of misdemeanors that people plead to in situations like this. That's fine. That's not the, I mean, this man is sitting on death row. That's what I mean. Like, that's the thing about it that like makes it so unique.
Speaker: It's just him. Yeah. you Like if he didn't do it, it was an accident. Right, and so that's... I guess that's the position that they're taking as the Attorney General. Like, this is still a murder. Isn't there so much wrong with that?
Speaker: It is. Yeah, it's it's an example of people, like, more pandering than working. And I have a feeling that if... we could you know talk it out. It's very hard to justify that position having just gone through it like we just did, right?
Speaker: Yeah. like Because clearly this wasn't even a murder, in my opinion. Now, reckless, negligent, whatever, possibly, but that's not what we're talking about. In fact, if that had been the case, we wouldn't be talking about it, right? Right. Because that's literally what... the, quote, perpetrator, end quote, said happened. I put her in the bathtub and I went downstairs to wash the dishes, right? That's negligence, like, just on its face because you can't leave two-year-olds alone in the bathtub.
Speaker: They're not old enough. And the fact that it turns into this horrific thing and, okay, and that horrific thing can When he is has been found not to have done it, it's no longer that horrific thing.
Speaker: They're not building these cases correctly. No, no, they are not. You're right. And like it's crazy because you have to go back to Hayden West. And you have to like look at where that problem comes into play and how they get this reputation for being the guys you go to to get the answers you want as opposed to the truth.
Speaker: And I don't think anything works towards the truth anymore. i think that you have people who want to work towards the truth, and then they have the, I don't know, determination to try and convey the truth.
Speaker: But even in the most perfect circumstances, like, they've got to, you know, finagle something, right? Yeah. And I'm not saying anything about that, really, except that the worst possible thing that the article, you know, the article says, what if the worst possible crime never happened?
Speaker: No, what if the worst crime imaginable never happened? And like, it essentially, it didn't happen, right? It never happened.
Speaker: And... The resources that have skewed, like, it think of all the other things they could have gone to, Right. right Because this poor child died from somebody not watching her, essentially. Which is, in and of itself, horrible. But, like, to me, his reaction that was recounted, like, that's the punishment there, right? 100%.
Speaker: hundred percent You're like, I wasn't paying attention. and you know, when you're a parent to a young child, like you realize that, right? Like you have to be on it all the time. If he had realized that was about to happen, he would not have done that. He would not have left her alone. Right. But that's part of, you know, that's why it's much less than a death penalty case, right? In those situations.
Speaker: But they took it to the next extreme. And in my opinion, the I don't feel like a child brutal rape is something that is a negotiable aspect of a case.
Speaker: It should either be very clear that it happened... or we should investigate until we know. Well, right, and that's going to have evidence, right? Which they didn't... The bite mark evidence is not a thing. And there was no ah
Speaker: fluid, there was no any like hard evidence to make it obvious that there was a sexual assault, right? Right.
Speaker: And what they were looking at was... it was negotiable. Like they could decide whether it fit it or not. And that's just not how like horrible rapes happen to two year olds.
Speaker: Yeah. There's a lot that goes into like the pathology of it all. And like when you start looking at the things that happen to the human body after a drowning or after certain types of accidental deaths, like it might be easy to visually misinterpret some of what's happening. But the truth is like,
Speaker: We're like humans have figured out a lot of science and we have figured out a way to tell when something has happened to the human body. And it's pretty rare instance like this that it gets that horribly misinterpreted. That video of the autopsy boggles my mind.
Speaker: And I know that's usually your phrase to say about things. Yeah. The fact that like this hour long video of this guy, like making additional bite marks to compare to the other bite marks.
Speaker: Like that is wild to me that they got away with making that video. And then the prosecutors were able to squash it and not give it to the defense. That's crazy.
Speaker: well Right? Yeah. Yeah. This whole thing, this whole case, like, you know, I don't, I don't sit down and go, okay, today I'm going to talk about everything everybody else is talking about. Otherwise you and I would talk about a lot of the mainstream stuff. That's very interesting. Um, and we have very strong opinions on it, but we don't have questions about it.
Speaker: Like we know what happened. And in this case, we don't even know if we have a crime. Yeah, in this case, there is no crime. It's it's literally just... There's an accident with that like potential criminal consequences that are not the death penalty.
Speaker: Right. And they're just it's two completely different worlds that are happening there. And to me, like... Oh, it's just, it's, this is one of the most atrocious things ever. Like, not the, not the non-crime, which was awful, but like the fact that this guy has had to endure this. Now, hopefully somebody will take the time to actually like look at the whole situation and realize that this is where it should end. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, that's what i was hoping to do. It's because, like, it they can't possibly, you know, the bite mark evidence isn't going to fly this time. So I don't think they'll have anything to move it forward again. But I don't know. It sounds to me like a lot of these positions, and I say that because it doesn't seem to matter who has filled the position, but a lot of these positions are going about things the wrong way.
Speaker: Yeah. and like So and this is my concluding thought on this. I thought I would share it with her everybody and then I'll get yours. I find myself in the weirdest positions week to week, day to where like i I find out people committed a crime all the time that like I had firmly up until the moment I know thought they didn't do it.
Speaker: And sometimes it's because they confess and the confession makes so much sense with everything that I've looked at. And sometimes it's because I just hit a wall and I realized that like I'm fighting against a mountain of evidence and like there's nothing to fight with.
Speaker: So I have to walk in and tell attorneys. I have to like walk into their office and say, okay, regarding this case, there's a thing you need to know. They confess to me or they um i'm i'm at the end of it and like everything is backing up the other side.
Speaker: They did it. And I very rarely see the kind of case that has just been made up of of whole cloth. It happens. Right.
Speaker: And like, I mean that to include like only major felonies. Like I see misdemeanors made up all the time, but um this is the kind of case that could happen to anybody.
Speaker: You could be driving home tonight and clip a deer and the fur on the bumper be misinterpreted as human hair until it's not.
Speaker: And You could be charged with a reckless homicide. They could decide that you were drunk at the time, even if you hadn't been drinking. And they can do all kinds of things to you. um It is very, very rare that it happens, but it's literally this kind of crime that could happen to anyone. And you and I have covered more weird baby abuse cases than I care to, like, recount right this second.
Speaker: um But several of them have resulted in people being on death row. They have. And it's interesting because... There are lots of elements to real cases, right? Right.
Speaker: right And most of the time, the real cases, they have other elements that you can tell. Like people don't just randomly decide they're going to violently rape their girlfriend's daughter in the bathtub one day, right? Right.
Speaker: right There's signs. Right. Yeah, there there are signs. There's a lead up. I mean, it does happen that it's like a brand new thing, but like not like this and not in a way that like – being accused of a horrific rape and murder of a baby because this is ah like a two-year-old, 23-month-old, whatever you want to say at the end of the day, that's a baby.
Speaker: Yeah. that kind of thing you never recover from it like even if you're found innocent you don't oh yeah no he's never going to recover from it but he also didn't do it to begin with and i don't know what it is about cases i can typically tell and like one of the tells in this case were they had to convince the physiological part of the crime, right? it You had to be convinced that it had happened. Yeah. And I think that should be a sign to everybody. Like anytime it can be,
Speaker: construed one way or the other what way should it be construed right which i understand in the mid 90s they were relying on this duo of bumbling idiots that they didn't know were bumbling idiots at the time right right i remember thinking to myself like how incredibly ridiculous that entire situation was but i didn't have the life experience to even say anything about it at that point right We know inherently
Speaker: things about like evidence. Like, of course, that's not hard evidence. That's ridiculous. But when you've got desperate prosecutors who want to make cases, right, they're willing to to go along with it because it accomplishes what they're trying to do.
Speaker: But in this case, the whole situation was wrong. And I'm actually really glad that, you know, this crime didn't happen and that, you They were able to overcome. I mean, this this was like a one in a million shot, really. i mean, to get it actually to where, I mean, he is going to be out. Unless somebody does something, which I don't think they're going to do, even if they wanted to, the evidence isn't there, right?
Speaker: Yeah, there's through it didn't happen. That's why the evidence isn't there. Exactly. So I don't even think they can pretend anymore. i hope not. But that is, it like, this is definitely, like, this is one of the worst pretend crimes I've ever read.
Speaker: Yeah. If it had happened, it would be a terrible crime. And instead, unfortunately, the crime is against the perpetrator, right? Which wasn't actually a perpetrator. He was just a boyfriend that was babysitting who they probably hadn't reminded him to not let the baby be in the bathtub by herself.
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